People don't stop killers. People with guns do [This is excellent!]

nydailynews.com ^ | April 18th 2007 | GLENN REYNOLDS

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[Cruz]

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[MarkL]

After MO passed the concealed carry permit law, my bank put up a sign stating that concealed carry of any weapons was not allowed. I mentioned to the bank branch manager how safe I felt in the bank, knowing that no bank robber or murderer would dare bring a gun into the bank, what with that sign there, and all!

He wasn't amused, and I told him that I wasn't either. And I assured him that anytime I was carrying a concealed weapon, if I needed something at the bank, I'd only use the drive through. After all, it's not like they could trust me... Everyone at the bank knows me, and I've been a customer at that branch for more than 15 years, without even a bounced check.

I'd have threatened to take my business to another bank, but there simply aren't any banks that DON'T have a similar sign posted.

Mark

[T-Bird45]

It might be reasonable to have a program something like air marshalls. Students and faculty who have state carry permits and who would be willing to undergo screening and combat training to obtain a campus carry permit.

Apples and oranges comparison -- air marshals are federal employees with a specific duty. The discussion is about the abrogation of the right of self-defense that exists in every person as a God-given right, not one that requires "screening and combat training". The comparison you were reaching for was the armed pilot program which is a morass of bureaucracy and bovine scatology. I'll pass, thanks.

[Tribune7]

Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws. In a comprehensive study of all public, multiple-shooting incidents in America between 1977 and 1999, the inestimable economists John Lott and Bill Landes found that concealed-carry laws were the only laws that had any beneficial effect.
--Ann Coulter

[Eastbound]

It’s those ‘impessioned’ ones you gotta watch out for. ;>

[Ford4000]

It might be reasonable to have a program something like air marshalls. Students and faculty who have state carry permits and who would be willing to undergo screening and combat training to obtain a campus carry permit.

You have got to be joking.

Anybody carrying a gun must be prepared to use it competently if the necessity arises. Otherwise, you're going to get yourself killed. Nobody permit holder needs additional training to understand this obvious fact.

[ricks_place]

The carnage from Islamo Nazis and mental psychotics (Is there a difference?) cannot be eliminated but it can be minimized. The nanny state, no-responsibility, socialist, relativistic, hedonistic culture must be replaced by a responsible, principled, dirty oriented, honor-bound warrior culture.

[Joe 6-pack]

"Ever notice that there a lots of mass-killings in “gun-free zones”, aka “criminal safety zones” but there aren’t any at police stations or military bases?"

Gun stores also appear to be relatively free of workplace violence incidents.

[CharlesWayneCT]

It’s almost always an armed citizen that ends these things. Sometimes it’s a police officer who is armed, sometimes a security guard. Sometimes a military man, sometimes a reservist, or national guard. Sometimes a hunter, or a sportsman.

And sometimes it is just an ordinary person with no special need to have a gun, just the belief that having a gun makes you responsible for others around you who do not.

It’s the big hole in the argument of the gun-grabbers. EVERY one of them wanted a gun in the building on Monday. Even the most rabid anti-2nd-amendment people wanted a gun in that building. They simply wanted that gun to be in the hands of what they think are the “right” people, like a trained law enforcement officer or a security guard.

Ignoring that police sometimes kill people out of rage, that security guards are human and sometimes go nuts, and that million of us are capable of being trained sufficiently to defend ourselves.

[cyclotic]

Someone at my office is preparing a training session on workplace security. I’m on record stating that a locked glass door and a phone is not security. I told them that if we were serious, the company would choose two employees, send them to a serious defensive weapons school and provide a shotgun and pistol which could be carried or secured at their desk.

Sadly, I doubt that my idea will be well received. Instead, they will come up with some other inane idea like banning pocketknives even though we have razor knives used in the course of business laying around in all the labs.

I just tell them that my pocketknife isn’t a weapon, it’s a tool. (The Gerber spring assist serrated blade model just barely qualifies)

[Rummyfan]

Spot on!

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

Leftist nonsense like “gun free zones”, “gun bans” make leftists feel good but endanger innocent people.
To sum it up, PC KILLS!

Why did’t the shooter start for the campus, realize there was a gun ban in effect, and call the whole thing off? Gun ban laws are supposed to keep guns off campus!

[Atlas Sneezed]

Anybody carrying a gun must be prepared to use it competently if the necessity arises. Otherwise, you’re going to get yourself killed. Nobody permit holder needs additional training to understand this obvious fact.

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Perhaps then you can explain why in the many states not requiring training, or requiring minimal or ineffectual training, that there has been no pattern of problems, and why the societal benefits of concealed carry freedom still occurs?

[Ford4000]

I think we both agree on this. A CC permit holder doesn’t need any government training to understand that if he pulls it out he had better hit what he is aiming at.

[caveat emptor]

Apples and oranges comparison -- air marshals are federal employees with a specific duty. The discussion is about the abrogation of the right of self-defense that exists in every person as a God-given right, not one that requires "screening and combat training". The comparison you were reaching for was the armed pilot program which is a morass of bureaucracy and bovine scatology. I'll pass, thanks.

Well, you make a good point. What I was considering was an arrangement between individuals and an institution. I might have expressed it better.

As for screening, the federal screening program obviously failed. Va Tech would have more knowledge of the individuals involved, and would be unable to pass the buck if the final decision was a bad one and was theirs.

My kids live in Virginia, have carry permits, and each have a 9mm and a .22 cal semi-automatic pistol (coincidentally). They also practice a couple of times a month on range with simulated combat situations - I don't know exact details.

As for a "God given right", you have no right, "God given" or otherwise, to carry a concealed handgun anywhere you please.

[shotgun]

At the college I attended in Oregon, this nut job would have only gotten off a few rounds before half the male students ran out to their trucks and retreived their weapons, including myself. We would hunt before class, skip class to hunt or just to go target shooting in the afternoon... It was a well know fact and the college never said anything about it to any of us...

[T-Bird45]

As for a "God given right", you have no right, "God given" or otherwise, to carry a concealed handgun anywhere you please.

Since I believe that I am a creation of a Divine Creator (as acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness), I have the right to self-defense in the interest of extending the gift of the Creator. If an action of the state interferes with the tools necessary to act to ensure that right then the state no longer has the moral standing to enforce its will upon my person in that regard.

All that said, I merely argued for the right of self-defense as the central point of the discussion at hand, not necessarily for the right to carry where I please. Each individual has to make choices concerning personal safety balanced with the knowledge of the law.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

EVERY one of them wanted a gun in the building on Monday. Even the most rabid anti-2nd-amendment people wanted a gun in that building. They simply wanted that gun to be in the hands of what they think are the “right” people, like a trained law enforcement officer or a security guard.

Someone should edit that into a tagline somehow.